Black Bag: Pick It Up

Just saw Black Bag, which popped up on Peacock on May 2, after debuting in theaters here in the U. S. on March 14.  It has a lot to commend itself,  including a top-notch cast, with Michael Fassbender (whom I just saw in The Agency, the CIA in London series which I reviewed the first three episodes of here), Cate Blanchett (who starred in lots of great movies and series, including recently Disclaimer, a brilliant literary psychological drama which I reviewed here), and Pierce Brosnan (formerly Remington Steele and James Bond, of course, currently starring in Mobland (giving a tour-de-force performance as a gang boss; I'll be reviewing it after its finale next week, but I can tell you now that it has one of the best theme songs I've heard in many a year).

Black Bag actually has some music running through it, too.  It has some action, but most of the time it's more a chess-piece cosy that Agatha Christie would have appreciated.  It also, like The Agency, flaunts the very best of current and possibly imagined AI and digital media in the spy-craft it details.  But its best feature is Fassbender's George and Blanchette's Kathryn as a loving couple who are likely good guys, and the rest of George's team, evenly matched between men and women who are also romantically involved in one way or another.

If I had a complaint, it probably would be that the narrative resolved itself a little too quickly, and may have played better as a limited series of three or four episodes.  Also, the villain was not as ingenuously concealed as in Agatha Christie's work, and maybe more time for that story to spool out would have been helpful too.

But the mix of espionage and romance worked well, and one advantage of a movie over a TV series is that you're not investing as much time in watching a movie as you would a series, so the movie's lack of perfection is less objectionable.

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